dbasedweeb

The existence of our nuclear arsenal does it without having to invade a country every decade or so. Are you saying we need more than 5K+ nukes to be secure?

I want you to engage in a thought experiment. I don’t code, and couldn’t program my way out of a wet paper bag. I assume that you can do much better than that, right? If I try to bullshit you about something you know a great deal about, from my position of ignorance, how long would it take for you to realize that I just knew little bits and pieces, but not the big picture? A sentence? Two?

And yet you seem to think that when it comes to physics, this same rule won’t apply. If you really care about the subjects you’re talking around, take some intro courses, really learn about it, or accept that you can only bullshit people who know less about the subject than you.

Phrases like, “the basic nature of our universe” sound good if you don’t know the first thing about the topic at hand, and probably impress people with no education or experience on said topic. To others, they’re huge giveaways that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Other red alerts are, “What is space?” “Empty space” and broad, substance-free critiques.

If you care about the subject and not just projecting a particular image of yourself, then bother to actually learn about them beyond the level of pop science. Critiquing something you demonstrably don’t have a deep knowledge of is a pointless exercise unless you’re just trying to impress people who know even less about it than you.

Here are some resources.

Intro To SR: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-20-introduction-to-spe...

Intro to GR: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/lectures/genrel_201...

Further reading on GR: Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler.

Intro to QED: http://sophia.dtp.fmph.uniba.sk/~peterp/QED_A.pdf

http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/hepsummerschool/Evans%2008%20Intro%20...

https://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/FrancescoHautmann...

Intro to QFT: QFT Demystified is a great starting point...

Quantum Field Theory by Claude Itzykson and Jean-Bernard Zuber

Anything by Zee, especially “For The Gifted Amateur”

Basic = simple

Fundamental = bedrock

QED works to the best ability of any test, down to one part in ten billion, so looking very close indeed. Then in order...

What is gravity? The geometry of spacetime.

What is a particle? A localized excitation of a field.

It may be that you don’t like or understand the answers, but they exist and allow people to make precise predictions, build machines that work based on said principles. Maybe you’re confusing scientific answers with philosophical ones?

When was the last time the military defended anyone in this country from an external threat? WWII? edit

I’m saying that deterrence and defense are different words with different meanings, and you used the word, “defend” somput down the goal posts.

Theories are tested and observations are made. If we’re lucky a positive result emerges, but more often what you get are results which just put constraints on the theory. For example MACHO theory was once seen as very plausible, but observations of gravitational lensing have placed strict limits on it so that it seems increasingly unlikely. Sometimes the process of constraining theory leads to a reformulation of the theory, sometimes to its abandonment. Other theories which more agreeably fit the constraints may come forward (i.e. WIMP theory on the case of DM), and they may in turn be abandoned or reformulated.

That’s science working as intended, or as people here like to say, a feature and not a bug. The more a theory has to make assumptions or introduce things like new particles and fields to make predictions, the less popular it tends to be. Of course once you constrain the solution space to the point where the simplest theories can’t hold, you have to consider the more complex ones. The important thing to remember is that none of this happens in a vacuum, and while personal preferences play a role, they do so only insofar as the constraints placed on theory by observation allow for it.

Incidentally that’s also why falsifiablility is such a big deal, because in its absence you can assert or believe any old thing.

Incomplete in very extreme conditions such as the interiors of black holes or the first instants after the Big Bang. I’m not really sure that’s “woeful” in a sense that matters to almost anyone other than a particle physicist or a cosmologist. For example the confidence in QED has been tested and found that the theory makes accurate predictions to within 10^-8.

I’d also argue that you’re substituting “basic” for “fundamental” and that’s bordering on dishonesty. We don’t have answers to some of the. OST fundamental questions, assuming we’re even asking the right questions, but the basics are well covered.

That sounds good, and is true, but comes with blistering caveats. First, the general case as he puts it, covers every macroscopic objects on and including Earth. It also covers microscopic objects until you reach particles, again on Earth, because of the energy scales involved. Everything from molecules to mammoths fit into this general case. If you charitably interpret “standard physics” [1] to include Relativistic and Quantum physics, then you cover everything in the universe that isn’t a black hole or less than or equal to 1.6x10^-45 meters, or at energies associated with the Planck epoch of the Big Bang.

We’re talking about archaeology, which is notably unconcerned with black holes or anything with a detectable de Broglie wavelength. I think that if were not going to be pedantic, and accept that we’re talking about physics as applied to Classical objects like finger bones, he’s right and there is little debate to be had. It we want to be a little pedantic we can say that QM is just about the best tested theory ever, and the rounding error left to quibble over isn’t a factor here.

If we want to be super pedantic we can point out that the “common” case on the scale of the universe is ultimately quantum-gravitational and therefore subject to physics that is not understood. Of course that majority is at distance scales we can’t access, or at energies or seem since the first second after the Big Bang. In that very very pedantic case you’re just as wrong as he is, but I think you’d rightly argue that it’s a pointless distinction in context. I’d agree with you.

[1] Standard physics isn't really up for question. Newtons Laws still apply in the general case.

Definitely crazy depth of content. I’ve spent hours watching someone shoot novel shotgun loads, and that channel took me to another all about how to program and operate a CNC mill, and I spent hours there. I remember being home sick as a little kid, and daytime tv was a nightmare of talk shows and things like The People’s Court. If I was too tired or sick to read, I’d just watch that stuff and wish something else was on.

Now, with YouTube you could watch absolutely anything at all. Physics lectures, classical concerts, or just cute cats and JPop, whatever. I realize people like to most about “the youth of today,” but for the right kind of kid, the world is their oyster. All of the encyclopedias and libraries are online, all of the education and entertainment is right there. It’s incredible. You can learn to cook everything from fried cheese to haute cuisine, learn to play an instrument or just watch a guy acapella with himself, and everything in between. Whatever you want to see is just a click or two away.

I love Youtube. All of the videos by Brady Haran are worth watching, Numberphile, Periodic Videos, and Sixty Symbols. There’s just a ton of great content, but of course there’s also a screaming pit of nastiness, politics, and conspiracy. The good news is that it’s incredibly easy to avoid the bad stuff, and easy to find the good stuff. YouTube is very much what you make of it, while Twitter is mostly toxic unless you curate aggressively.

True, but there were 40 years between that focus and their attempts at empire in WWII, while China is still very much still in “hold it all together” mode. Even though Japan has an impressively chaotic internal political history, it’s always been a small nation. China has always been huge, with lots of land routes and connections to other potential invaders. While superficially similar, I think that the Chinese commitment to unity Uber Alle is unlikely to change the way Japan’s did.

The original “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was a concept of the Japanese empire during WWII. Given the deep and abiding loathing many in China still have for Japan, what you’re saying seems phrased in a way to be maximally upsetting. Note that I don’t think you’re wrong, I’m just impressed at how much needling can be packed into one post!

One possible argument against the notion is that China has always been manically focused on internal unity. Their ambitions abroad, while extensive, will always take a backseat to internal cohesion. China seems to be preparing for a certain amount of internal social upheaval, and if that does happen it would probably curb their external activities to an extent.

This kind of economic “outreach” is possibly a way to get imperial without having to overcommit. It’s a little scary, because as you say it could work. If the Chinese play it right, they could dominate economically without firing a shot, except maybe in Taiwan

I think the result of this may be regulation, or even breaking Facebook up. A few months ago I couldn’t have imagined feeling justified saying that was likely, but my god this story has legs. On CBS news (which is mediocre at best) they had someone from Mozilla explaining that this whole mess isn’t a breach or mistake, but their business model. The piece played at least three times in an hour.

This feels like a real change in public awareness to me. I’ve never seen this kind of real talk about privacy in the non technical press before, and it just keeps going and going. How can Facebook thrive as people become aware of just how crooked they are?

So make them pay for externalities, and you’ll see the necessary reduction.

If you’re into etymology at all, it’s worth knowing that originally a hagiography was the biography of a saint, focusing on their miracles.

I agree, and again anecdotally I found the same to be true when I was a kid at school. At most you had a few sub-groups, like the guys who were into Transformers, and the guys into GI Joe. We were not a sophisticated bunch, but then as you pointed out, our brains were still larval. When Lunchables came out, we all wanted them. From my recollection we didn’t even like the taste, we just wanted them.

There was some variation, but it was all on a predictable theme.

Or worse, when a corrupt official sells electricity usage stats to the criminal syndicates, and suddenly you’re being tortured for your private key, or mining for them?

Of course, most programming for kids has been just that for decades, with a few notable exceptions (Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, others probably). The programs themselves when I was a kid typically took the form of a 22 minute toy advertisement, interspersed with more advertising. Of course, they didn’t have data on my particular viewing habits and a psych profile, but honestly it still worked pretty well.

The best bet if you care about your kid is probably to try and curate yourself. That’s definitely doable if you’re well-off in a two parent home with one child at a time, but how many families does that describe on average?

I’m not going to be able to debate the validity of your experiences of course, and I won’t try to. I can say with confidence however that for most people, psychosis is strongly correlated with poor outcomes including homelessness and suicide. Early intervention and prevention leads to the best outcomes, and the more psychotic events in a persons life, the worse the outcomes are on average.

I never claimed to have a way to fix or save Venezuela, in the same way that I can’t bring the dead back to life. I’d still feel comfortable telling someone to stop fiddling with a day old corpse in the hopes of restoring life to it, and I’d question their motives. Especially if it seemed like there was profit or ideology at stake.

I asked how this article survives the weight of its own lofty claims for a cryptocurrency. Do you have an answer?

Wait, did you sign up for Hacker News a few minutes ago just for that post?

It opens with a very strong claim.

Bitcoin is a lifeline for citizens and residents of Venezuela.

It actually does seem harmful to frame “pro-crypto” in those unlikely terms. Or in other words, how does inventing an abstraction layer on top of your original failed currency, obtained by burning fossile fuels, help the average Venezuelan trying to buy food and sundries? It seems more like slapping a bandaid on a sucking chest wound and claiming that you’ve helped the patient.

I’m not interested in the “crypto space” and what it needs, especially in a discussion of an article purporting to describe what the people of Venezuela need. Unless those two things overlap to the degree that it’s a “lifeline” for those people, it reeks of the usual pumping of cryptocurrency that seems to pervade the “space” in question.

Bmelton: Between the distortion of the original Economist article used in this article, and this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783272

I’d say that’s not what this is about. This currency is just a laundry for dollar bills.

This article completely ignores all of the reasons why the economy collapsed, and seems to just happily go on with the unstated assumption that a new currency can help. The truth is that Venezuela is dead, what you’re seeing now is just agonal breathing, not life. Society is divided, the economy is destroyed, so of course the currency based on that failed. How does inventing a new currency on top of that failed system help? How is it not rearranging deck chairs on the Lusitania?

Maybe a few miners can strike it rich through money laundering, based on heavily subsidized mining, but that fixes nothing. Cryptocurrency isn’t an escape from reality.

Seroquel is part of a family of drugs (antipsychotics) which have some of the worst long term adverse effects of all psychiatric drugs. Everything from tardive dyskenisia to enlargement of the ventricles of the brain are routinely observed over decades of use, and that’s not even mentioning adverse effects which appear almost immediately. In general though, these drugs have little or nothing to do with antidepressants, SSRI’s or anything most poeple will ever take.

Of course the adverse effects of psyshcosis and untreated psychotic illness are much worse, including homelessness and death. So while these drugs are undeniably difficult to live with, people who have been prescribed the family including Seroquel generally really need them to function. All of which is to say that the struggles of people on neuroleptic therapy are generally very different from what’s being discussed in the article here.

It would have to be scales beyond the observable universe then, because it appears to operate as expected. If distance scales change things, then nearby galaxies would behave differently from very large clusters, quasars should display odd behavior, smaller galaxies would behave very differently from larger ones.

We don’t see any of that.

Third option: Zuckerberg said, “just fucking do it,” and they just fucking did it. Total control is very much a double edged sword, especially when the person in control seems to have only a tenuous grasp of human nature.

There’s a theory which accounts for that called MACHO, for MAssive Compact Halo Object. While it’s possible, over many years of observation it’s very unlikely. You can’t see a black hole directly, unless it’s “eating” of course, but you can see gravitational effects like lensing. If black holes and neutron stars made up most dark matter, we’d expect to see evidence of it, and we don’t. It is still possible, although Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are more likely, along with Axions and Sterile Neutrinos.

Everything in the Solar system is gravitationally bound by the Sun, which is what makes it part of the system in the first place. In that sense, yes, and really the whole Solar system is too. There’s some nuance lost in that formulation though, because unlike a moon that came too close to its planet, broke apart and became a ring, the asteroid belt is much more distant and diffuse. It’s also true that Jupiter sort of “shepherds” the asteroid belt, so unlike something like planetary rings, it’s a much more complex system. I hope that goes some way to answering your question, which wasn’t dumb at all.

A fever, muscle pain, and cough are symptoms of a lot of different diseases, right? Same here, although minus the disease. Grieving, acute stress, homesickness, depression and anxiety and a lot more share the common symptoms described. PTSD does too, but that’s not all that defines it. Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, hyper vigilance, emotional outbursts, vivid and disturbing dreams, and all of this over a period of months is suggestive of PTSD. If you check out some of the diagnostic manuals, you’ll find a common theme is a list of symptoms, and instruction that a certain number need to be present over a given time frame.

So a cough for a few days suggests a cold, while a cough and high fever for a week suggest something else, and coughing up blood suggests something dire. See what I mean?

This may be disappointing, but it would be the same for all of the planets, even Jupiter. Ignoring the effects on orbital dynamics from the planets changing positions or falling past other planets, they’d just burn up. Jupiter probsbly explode, or be drawn into a rig around the sun that would eventually fall in, and burn up.

All in all, the Sun is just huge and wouldn’t be disturbed by any of it. Its gravity would tear things apart before an impact, just like the moon would be shredded if it came too close to Earth. Any sattelite has what’s called a Roche Limit, and if passes that it breaks apart from tidal stresses. That’s how you get rings around planets, and I guess a star too. Although in most cases you wouldn’t have a ring around a star, just burning fragments falling Sunward.

Nothing much. The Sun is most of the mass in the Solar system, by over 97%. Most of the rest of that mass is Jupiter, followed at quite a distance by Saturn. Jupiter has more than 5700 times the mass of Mercury. In other words, next to the Sun, Mercury is a teeny little speck that would barely even leave a “splash” as it roasted to a cinder in its corona. It would be the most underwhelming event you can imagine, for Sol. For Mercury it would be an exciting journey of vaporizing outer layers, being torn to little shreds, and those shreds vaporizing completely (all before it contacted anything like a “surface”).

That’s still deflagration and not detonation. Don’t get me wrong, understand that rapid thermal decomposition of a battery strongly resembles an explosion, but it isn’t one. Scary, dangerous, but only in terms of burns and shrapnel, no shockwave is produced.